Today, so many LGBTQ people across the country — along with immigrants, Black, Indigenous and other communities of color, among so many others — exhaled after four incredibly long years of holding our breath. Today, we have unabashed allies in President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris — who have committed to advancing the most pro-LGBTQ agenda in our nation’s history.

There is so much work to do. But for today, let’s celebrate that LGBTQ foster and adoptive parents will no longer need to fear discrimination from an administration hell bent on persecuting them to gain political favor for an emboldened  rightwing. Let’s honor our trans troops, who will no longer need to hide their gender identities in order to serve our country. Let’s welcome LGBTQ asylum seekers, who will once again be able to turn to our country as a place of hope and new beginnings.

And let’s acknowledge that our kids now have a man to look up to who has managed to overcome deep personal losses, a speech impediment, and incredibly hateful disinformation about him and his family in order to rise to the most powerful office in the country. As well as a Vice-President who has shattered yet another glass ceiling to become the first woman, and the first Asian American and Black woman, to hold that office — and who has a big, blended, non-traditional family that is, more and more, reflective of the average American household.

Let’s just take a quick moment to celebrate, because, again, there is so much work to do: we continue to suffer from once-in-a-century health and economic crises. It will take years, as well, to not only reverse all of the damages done to vulnerable and struggling communities over the past four years, but to do right by these communities by proactively seeking and enacting policies that advance social, economic and gender justice.

But as the 22-year-old poet, Amanda Gorman, said today at Biden’s inauguration, as millions watched, together but apart, from their homes, “The new dawn blooms as we free it… if only we’re brave enough to see it.”